Early to Mid 20th Century American Toilets

20th Century American Toilets

These are the toilets of the U.S.A. in the period
from about 1900 through the 1950s.

Woodrow Wilson
was the 28th President of the United States, serving from
1913 through 1921.
He initially kept the U.S. out of what later came to be known
as World War I, but Germany's increasing belligerence forced
the U.S. into the war.

Wilson negotiated for the armistice ending World War I,
aiming for an equitable peace and statehood for formerly
oppressed nations.
His famous Fourteen Points address introduced the
idea of a League of Nations to preserve territorial integrity
and political independence.
He was given the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for his
peace-making efforts.

He suffered a debilitating stroke toward the end of his
second term in office, gradually improving through the
remainder of that term.
He and his wife retired to a very nice home in Washington.
He died in 1924, and she continued living in the house
until her death in 1961.

Hearst Castle,
the mountaintop estate of publishing mogul
William Randolph Hearst,
features indoor and outdoor pools,
ornate fountains, and, of course, toilets, sinks,
showers, and tubs.
It was built over the period 1919-1947.

The Coit Tower
was built in 1933 in San Francisco.

It's a 210-foot art deco tower built as a monument to the
San Francisco firefighters,
bequeathed to the city by a wealthy socialite,
Lillie Hitchcock Coit,
who enjoyed chasing after the fire department
when they went on fire runs.

Her will specified that one third of her fortune was
"to be expended in an appropriate manner for the purpose of
adding to the beauty of the city which I have always loved."

The Coit Tower's interior is decorated by murals painted
under the Public Works of Art Project, a New Deal
federal employment program.

The large freestanding urinal, toilet, marble partitions,
and tile floor also seem to date from the 1930s.

The U.S. Department of the Interior headquarters
in Washington, D.C., seems like a time capsule
from around 1945.

This includes their restrooms,
featuring the old-style "Watch Your Step" urinals.

These vintage urinals have been updated with
infrared motion sensors controlling the flush valves.

The Department of the Interior toilets
are of similar vintage.

Their horseshoe seats are made of hard black rubber
with a dull finish.

Hard rubber is probably not as clean as a modern hard-surface
plastic, but then that wouldn't be as traditional.

Notice how the stalls have marble walls and dark wooden doors.
Classy!

You can visit these restrooms on your way to and from the
Department of the Interior museum.
Among other things, the museum explains that the department
administers mining and oil extraction industries providing
the raw materials for such common everyday items as
33-1/3 RPM long-playing records.
So, these designs seem very appropriate for the
department headquarters.

The
Corcoran Gallery of Art
is just a few blocks away from the Department of the
Interior in Washington, D.C.
The Corcoran has some of the big old trumpet shaped urinals
from the 1930s or 1940s.

Dwight Eisenhower
was the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Western Europe
during World War II.
He planned and led all major operations in the
Western European Theatre of Operations,
with OVERLORD, the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944
being the biggest of all.

After the war he served as the commander of NATO,
and in 1952 and 1956 he was elected to two terms
as President of the U.S.A.

See the dedicated page
to learn about his retirement home near Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, and to read how Winston Churchill,
Charles De Gaulle, and Nikita Krushchev
may have also used
the very toilet
seen here.

New York City
is notorious for a lack of public toilets,
at least in some areas like Midtown Manhattan.

However, if you are walking along Delancey Street
on the Lower East Side, this sturdy brick public lavatory
awaits you.
It's in the grassy median of Allen Street.

The Capri Inn is a reasonably placed price to stay
in San Francisco.
It's a "motor inn" from the 1950s or possibly early 1960s,
and its jaunty all-porcelain bathroom design reflects
its era.

My cromwell-intl.com domain appeared in September, 2001,
although the Wayback Machine didn't notice its one enormous
Toilet of the World page until
January 17, 2002.
Some time soon after that I split it into categories,
and the collection has grown ever since.

In December, 2010 I registered the
toilet-guru.com
domain and moved the pages to a dedicated server.